November 14, 2022

Yesteryear
One year ago today: November 14, 2021, the doggies love me.
Five years ago today: November 14, 2017, five miles from Zetella.
Nine years ago today: November 14, 2013, Carlsbad Caverns, phooey!
Random years ago today: November 14, 1994, using a credit card.

           Down to 60ºF overnight is not wonderful in these parts. Only November and I had to haul out one of my two room heaters. Just for early mornings now and cream of wheat for breakfast. It’s the only time I eat cinnamon & sugar and only because they don’t make nutmeg & stevia. This means a nice 70-ish day if it is sunny, it is now 5:35AM and ten hours in the sack did me good.
           How much will we get done? Depends on how long I stay awake. I was reading up on the sorry affair we are calling A.I., and as usual it is another free-for-all of the type that produced the mess on the Internet today. I’ve been sniped at by a group who think it is a good thing that finding info on-line is so much more difficult than it should be.

           While recognizing the technology follows the money, overall there is a loss when certain ground rules are not established. That is where A.I. is going. There are already complaints of abuse, where those who have A.I., even really bad A.I., can take advantage. Example, insurance companies using machine learning to custom-write policies that have clauses that block certain claims based on user data. The way American capitalism is supposed to work, competition for low prices would mean the savings be passed back to consumers via lower premiums.
           Instead, prices are kept high and the new profits stashed as a war chest to stifle competition, the exact opposite. Prime example is car companies. They’ve established so many “safety laws” you can’t start a new company, and prices never go down. Silver has slowly edged up to $22 an ounce. Let me know when it hits $30, then $50, but I have no need to sell unless it hits at least $100. If that never happens, I still don’t need to sell as I learned long ago that protecting an investment is as important as making one.

           Horror stories out of Arizona and the left blatantly cheats, knowing they control the police who are civil servants. They just keep on counting and trucking in ballots until they win. Some districts have 712% of the population voting and the police do nothing. All I can say is such districts have done this for years and now consider it a right. Be warned, they are not leaving the majority much choice. And overall the mainstream news remains divide and conquer. They are pushing for DeSantis to run against fellow Republican Trump in an effort to divide the 2024 vote.
           Myself, I hope DeSantis stays in his lane. He is governor material, not presidential. NBC, the tard station, is now broadcasting dire warnings for the fall “tripledemic”, which tells parents to keep their kids away from the unvaccinated. Tomorrow is Trump’s big scheduled announcement. It’s scary, for the American people have shown they are gutless unless war is declared.

           Shopping took the morning away but I think I found the correct coupling for the air line. It was not cheap at $7. But once you figure out it is not in the specialty section, you’ll find it quickly enough at Lowe’s. Harbor Freight has gone downhill. Their prices are still lower but not so much and the staff seems more trained to get you on file than ring you out. The till is not the place to do surveys, gather customer data, or sell service contracts. Here is a view of the adapter, the problem finding it was I was supposed to know it is not a coupling, but an adapter. How silly of me.
           I may put a few things on hold while I rig up these air lines. They are mighty handy but for now I have to drag everything to the back, even to clean a spark plug. This means a new breaker, the wiring, the receptacle (already have a switch with a pilot light), a concrete block base, a wooden stand, weatherproof canopy, and copper tubing that runs the width of the white shed and the length of both sheds. I’ll plan for one three connections in the white shed and one in the red, and one outside near the vehicle parking area. Now that I want them, I cannot find those neat yellow coils to connect the tools. I know I’ve seen them at a Wal*Mart, but which one?

Picture of the day.
Salt block fried egg.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Here’s a view of the hot dog cart as it sits under a tarp in storage. The hurricane shredded the tarp and Agt. R did not, it seems, feel it was necessary to call me to let me know. Anyway, I have a spot for it if I dismantle the hillbilly space and I think it will be easy enough to put up a fence to keep prying eyes away. This way, I can test it and decide better what to do with the thing. There is no reason it should not fire right up but it has been in storage a long time. Just in time, too. Amazon just announced 10,000 layoffs as this is not the time to experience negative cash flow.

           In other news, Google has paid $400 million to 40 states in settlement of illegal data collection. The media says this is a big win for consumers, but who gets the money? Have gotten your ten bucks? Me neither, so back to work and today I managed two hours. Gainin’ on ya. A late afternoon start meant it was mosquitoes that drove me in. The shed is okay because the blast of the big fan keeps them away but again I was cleaning pallets, this time for the base of the compressor. I think what I have is going to work fine, though I will have to buy two long sections. I’m planning to include two clearout plugs that none of the blueprints call for. Over the years a lot of screws, nails, and staples have been dropped in those sheds. A simple gravity trap should be enough and prove interesting besides.

           Unable to find my old pry bar, I found a foot long model on sale for $4 and that’s a keeper. I have to position the compressor where I can reach the drain plug. That is always inconvenient, so let’s do a search on what’s available. I can’t find anything automatic and I dislike the twisty kind. If it has a 1/4' fitting, I’ll think about installing a big lever valve.
           Back inside, I watched a video on the Hundred Years War (France & England), normally outside my sphere, which is weapons. It was a documentary about the difference between an arrow and a bolt. The first is shot from a bow, the other from a crossbow. The bolts could not normally be picked up by the other side and shot back.

ADDENDUM
           Flavion. You never heard of it, a village in northern France. It’s where French tanks hit the flank of Rommel’s Ghost Division. I know it because it’s the location the French solidified their excuses for losing tank-on-tank battles. For example they do go on how the roads were choked with refugees, how it took them five hours to go 5 kilometers. I’m no tank commander, but I would have thought, gee, if I’m going to drive in low gear for the next five hours, and the tank is an off-road vehicle, I’ve got an idea. Then again, I’m not French, either.
           Interesting Engineering is about as woketard as that field gets, but it seeped through my filters on the NASA ticket. They’ve published that we Earthlings may be alone in the Universe. The basis is that in our galaxy alone there are billions of planets where life should have arose. Instead we’ve got nothing but dead silence out there. (My theory is the intelligence is there, we just don’t have the technology to detect it. And in reverse, they know about us, much like we know about ant colonies. Nothing to phone home about.)
           At any rate, the post says that all these of advanced species killed themselves off. How? Well of course, it was racism, climate change, nuclear war, inequality, and a bunch of haters who refused to get a vaccination when told to do so. What’s more, all of this took place just before their civilization was just about to “expand off-world”. I didn’t read any further because they’ve already blamed enough on Trump.

Last Laugh